The cannibalism accusation served colonial conquest as a justifying trope

Evidence

In relation to the Americas, different tropes emerged. Cannibalism (a theme in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and stories about Captain Cook in the Pacific) was the flipside of the romantic paradise-lost image of life among the savages. During colonialism the accusation of cannibalism often served as a justification of conquest. Recently it has been argued that cannibalism is basically a myth: while ritual cannibalism (eating a small part of an enemy’s body for magical purposes) does occur, gustatory cannibalism (eating humans as food) has nowhere been observed (Arens, 1979; Barker, Hulme, and Iversen, 1998). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 190

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes ritual cannibalism (magical eating of a small body part) from gustatory cannibalism (humans as food), which Arens argues was never observed.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 190